Land policies, especially those related to land restoration, take significant time to reveal any detectable effect on environmental quality. This paper evaluates farmland conservation programs from their introduction to capture the shortand long-term effects on the environment. I demonstrate that current differences in environmental outcomes within the Great Plains can be traced to the introduction of farmland conservation activities in the 1930s. Using spatial and temporal variation in the policy, I identify that the policy has a considerable immediate effect on the agricultural landscape. Spatial heterogeneity depends on agrarian land tenancy, access to irrigation, institutional, political, and demographic factors. Also, using spatial variation in federal planning map and incentive structure for land conversion, I present that the initial conversion of land through many institutional changes had persistent effects on soil erosion in the long term. Using the policy’s discontinuity in some years, I reveal that the likelihood of landowners’ deciding to restore grassland significantly decreases if the federal subsidy is removed.
{"title":"Environmental Recovery after the Dust Bowl: Implication of Land Policies in the Great Plains","authors":"Aparna Howlader","doi":"10.1086/726154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726154","url":null,"abstract":"Land policies, especially those related to land restoration, take significant time to reveal any detectable effect on environmental quality. This paper evaluates farmland conservation programs from their introduction to capture the shortand long-term effects on the environment. I demonstrate that current differences in environmental outcomes within the Great Plains can be traced to the introduction of farmland conservation activities in the 1930s. Using spatial and temporal variation in the policy, I identify that the policy has a considerable immediate effect on the agricultural landscape. Spatial heterogeneity depends on agrarian land tenancy, access to irrigation, institutional, political, and demographic factors. Also, using spatial variation in federal planning map and incentive structure for land conversion, I present that the initial conversion of land through many institutional changes had persistent effects on soil erosion in the long term. Using the policy’s discontinuity in some years, I reveal that the likelihood of landowners’ deciding to restore grassland significantly decreases if the federal subsidy is removed.","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42441788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does the National Flood Insurance Program Drive Migration to Higher Risk Areas?","authors":"A. Peralta, Jonathan B. Scott","doi":"10.1086/726155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726155","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44402304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"California’s cap-and-trade program and emission leakage in the Western Interconnection: comparing econometric and partial equilibrium model estimates","authors":"C. L. Prete, A. Tyagi, Qingyu Xu","doi":"10.1086/726053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726053","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46047524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We exploit a spatial discontinuity in two natural gas utilities’ service territory—combined with variation in their block-rate pricing structure and a difference in how prima facie determined wholesale prices are deferentially passed though to consumers—to identify average, seasonal, and income-specific own-price elasticities of residential natural gas demand. We estimate an average elasticity ranging from 0.15–0.19 depending on the measure of price used. We further estimate that this elasticity varies substantially across seasons, income groups, and their interaction. We find no significant difference in consumers’ responses to average versus marginal prices. JEL Codes: Q41, Q48, D12, H23, Q31
{"title":"Quantifying Heterogeneity in the Price Elasticity of Residential Natural Gas","authors":"Edward A. Rubin, M. Auffhammer","doi":"10.1086/726017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726017","url":null,"abstract":"We exploit a spatial discontinuity in two natural gas utilities’ service territory—combined with variation in their block-rate pricing structure and a difference in how prima facie determined wholesale prices are deferentially passed though to consumers—to identify average, seasonal, and income-specific own-price elasticities of residential natural gas demand. We estimate an average elasticity ranging from 0.15–0.19 depending on the measure of price used. We further estimate that this elasticity varies substantially across seasons, income groups, and their interaction. We find no significant difference in consumers’ responses to average versus marginal prices. JEL Codes: Q41, Q48, D12, H23, Q31","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43953584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Growth of private vehicle ownership in low-income and emerging countries is a dominant factor in forecasts of global oil demand and greenhouse gas emissions. Countries such as China are expected to experience rapid income growth over the next few decades, but little causal evidence exists on its effect on car ownership in these countries. Using city-level data on new car sales and income from 2005 to 2017, and using export-led growth to isolate plausibly exogenous income variation, we estimate an elasticity of new car sales to income of about 2.5. This estimate indicates that recent projections of vehicle sales in China have understated actual sales by 36 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 18 million metric tons in 2017. The results suggest that, to meet its climate objectives, China’s climate policies will need to be substantially more aggressive than previous forecasts indicate. *Linn: University of Maryland and Resources for the Future (linn@umd.edu). Shen: University of Maryland. The authors thank Anna Alberini, Jim Archsmith, Erich Battistin, Jing Cai, and Cinzia Cirilo for helpful comments.
{"title":"The Effect of Income on Vehicle Demand: Evidence from China's New Vehicle Market","authors":"Joshua Linn, Chang Shen","doi":"10.1086/725910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725910","url":null,"abstract":"Growth of private vehicle ownership in low-income and emerging countries is a dominant factor in forecasts of global oil demand and greenhouse gas emissions. Countries such as China are expected to experience rapid income growth over the next few decades, but little causal evidence exists on its effect on car ownership in these countries. Using city-level data on new car sales and income from 2005 to 2017, and using export-led growth to isolate plausibly exogenous income variation, we estimate an elasticity of new car sales to income of about 2.5. This estimate indicates that recent projections of vehicle sales in China have understated actual sales by 36 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 18 million metric tons in 2017. The results suggest that, to meet its climate objectives, China’s climate policies will need to be substantially more aggressive than previous forecasts indicate. *Linn: University of Maryland and Resources for the Future (linn@umd.edu). Shen: University of Maryland. The authors thank Anna Alberini, Jim Archsmith, Erich Battistin, Jing Cai, and Cinzia Cirilo for helpful comments.","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43027787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
F. Alpízar, María Bernedo Del Carpio, Paul J. Ferraro
Resource-conserving technologies are widely reported to benefit both the people who adopt them and the environment. Evidence for these “win-win” claims comes largely from modeling or nonexperimental designs and mostly from the energy sector. In a randomized trial of water-efficient technologies, the ex ante engineering estimate of water use reductions was three times higher than the experimental estimate, a divergence arising from engineering and behavioral reasons other than the rebound effect. Using detailed cost information and experimentally elicited time and risk preferences, we infer that the private welfare gains from adoption are, on average, negative, implying no “efficiency paradox.”
{"title":"Input Efficiency as a Solution to Externalities and Resource Scarcity: A Randomized Controlled Trial","authors":"F. Alpízar, María Bernedo Del Carpio, Paul J. Ferraro","doi":"10.1086/725700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725700","url":null,"abstract":"Resource-conserving technologies are widely reported to benefit both the people who adopt them and the environment. Evidence for these “win-win” claims comes largely from modeling or nonexperimental designs and mostly from the energy sector. In a randomized trial of water-efficient technologies, the ex ante engineering estimate of water use reductions was three times higher than the experimental estimate, a divergence arising from engineering and behavioral reasons other than the rebound effect. Using detailed cost information and experimentally elicited time and risk preferences, we infer that the private welfare gains from adoption are, on average, negative, implying no “efficiency paradox.”","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48022593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carbon trading faces pushback over concerns of increasing copollutant exposure for minorities. Combining federal and state data I evaluate three questions concerning the distribution of hazardous air pollutants after implementation of California’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. Did air toxic releases from facilities covered by the GHG program upwind of minorities disproportionately increase? Did minority communities suffer a disproportionate increase in cumulative exposure from covered facilities? Did minorities overall suffer higher exposure to air toxics from all sources relative to a counterfactual no-cap-and-trade scenario? Results suggest that covered facilities upwind of minorities did not have higher releases, and minority communities experienced a relative reduction in cumulative exposure from them. Under all policy scenarios minorities have a less desirable exposure distribution than whites. However, both demographic groups have a better air toxic exposure distribution with the cap-and-trade program than in a counterfactual without.
{"title":"California’s GHG cap and trade program and the equity of air toxic releases","authors":"G. Sheriff","doi":"10.1086/725699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725699","url":null,"abstract":"Carbon trading faces pushback over concerns of increasing copollutant exposure for minorities. Combining federal and state data I evaluate three questions concerning the distribution of hazardous air pollutants after implementation of California’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. Did air toxic releases from facilities covered by the GHG program upwind of minorities disproportionately increase? Did minority communities suffer a disproportionate increase in cumulative exposure from covered facilities? Did minorities overall suffer higher exposure to air toxics from all sources relative to a counterfactual no-cap-and-trade scenario? Results suggest that covered facilities upwind of minorities did not have higher releases, and minority communities experienced a relative reduction in cumulative exposure from them. Under all policy scenarios minorities have a less desirable exposure distribution than whites. However, both demographic groups have a better air toxic exposure distribution with the cap-and-trade program than in a counterfactual without.","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41452816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Front Matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1086/726105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/726105","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134992380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We develop a computable general equilibrium model of the United States economy to study the unemployment effects of climate policy and the importance of cross-sectoral labor mobility. We consider two alternate extreme assumptions about labor mobility: either perfect mobility, as is assumed in much previous work, or perfect immobility. The effect of a $35 per ton carbon tax on aggregate unemployment is small and similar across the two labor mobility assumptions (0.2–0.3 percentage points). The effect on unemployment in fossil fuel sectors is much larger under the immobility assumption – a 30 percentage-point increase in the coal sector – suggesting that models omitting labor mobility frictions may greatly under-predict sectoral unemployment effects. Returning carbon tax revenue through labor tax cuts can dampen or even reverse negative impacts on unemployment, while command-and-control policies yield larger unemployment effects.
{"title":"Unemployment, Labor Mobility, and Climate Policy","authors":"Kenneth A. Castellanos, Garth Heutel","doi":"10.1086/725482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725482","url":null,"abstract":"We develop a computable general equilibrium model of the United States economy to study the unemployment effects of climate policy and the importance of cross-sectoral labor mobility. We consider two alternate extreme assumptions about labor mobility: either perfect mobility, as is assumed in much previous work, or perfect immobility. The effect of a $35 per ton carbon tax on aggregate unemployment is small and similar across the two labor mobility assumptions (0.2–0.3 percentage points). The effect on unemployment in fossil fuel sectors is much larger under the immobility assumption – a 30 percentage-point increase in the coal sector – suggesting that models omitting labor mobility frictions may greatly under-predict sectoral unemployment effects. Returning carbon tax revenue through labor tax cuts can dampen or even reverse negative impacts on unemployment, while command-and-control policies yield larger unemployment effects.","PeriodicalId":47114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135127222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}